Note: This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, just a rundown of the eras in horror comedy. Feel free to suggest titles, or whole epochs, that we may have missed out.

The 1920s stage plays

In the 1920s, playwrights decided to spice up their stage plays by adding more horror elements, creating silly haunted-house and monster stories like The Bat, The Cat & The Canary and The Gorilla. Some of these, like Canary, got adapted to silent movies. The 1925 Lon Chaney film The Monster also features a comic-relief character, but isn't really a full-fledged comedy.

Abbott And Costello And Laurel And Hardy And So On

In many ways, the 1930s and 1940s were the heyday of the "clean" horror comedy, which featured monsters without any real gore or violence. Laurel And Hardy did A Live Ghost in 1934, the haunted-house movie The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case in 1930 and A-Haunting We Will Go in 1942. The Three Stooges also dabbled in horror-comedy with short films like 1943's Spooks!. And then going into the 1940s, Abbott and Costello, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and Bob Hope, among others, brought the genre to new prominence. There's also the hilariously titled Zombies On Broadway. Let's put on a show!

1960s Anarchy

The 1960s saw a slew of trippy novels, movies and TV shows in which horror elements often jostled with comedic ones — several of Peter Sellers' 1960s comedies often veer into horror at odd moments. At the same time, monster sitcoms like The Munsters and The Addams Family ruled television with their zany portrayals of monsters who were just like us — almost. This was also the era that gave the start of the long-running Scooby Doo cartoons, and a slew of cute/funny images of monsters, from the Frankenberry cereal to the Count on Sesame Street.

Self-Aware Campiness

Susan Sontag published her famous essay on "camp" in 1964, but the 1970s really backed up the camp truck to our door, and dumped a load of glitter on our front steps. Horror comedy was no exception, with Vincent Price starring in two mega-campy Dr. Phibes movies, and other over-the-top horror films like Please Don't Eat My Mother and Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes taking over cinemas. Most of all, Rocky Horror Picture Show became a defining movie for a whole ripped-fishnets-sporting generation.

The self-aware horror spoof genre took off way more in the early 1980s, with movies like Creepshow mocking the genre's cliches. And in general, the horror-comedy movie genre really came into its own in the 1980s, diversifying into a bunch of thriving sub-genres.

Ghostbusters, Gremlins and more

1984 saw the release of both Ghostbusters and Gremlins, sparking a new onslaught of cute/scary monsters and ghosts, including four (!) Critters movies. I'd also put 1986's Little Shop Of Horrors and Haunted Honeymoon into this category: wide-eyed protagonists coming face-to-tentacle with weird, slimy or fluffy-but-nasty creatures. According to Box Office Mojo, both Ghostbusters films and the first Gremlins occupy three out of the top four best-selling horror comedy slots of all time.

Troma comedies in the 1980s and beyond

Troma deserves its own category, for its sheer volume of output if for no other reason. Although it's best known for the Toxic Avenger films and Surf Nazis Must Die, there are just so many weird, over-the-top and just plain wrong Troma films out there, you could fill a bookshelf with the DVDs. And really, Troma is just the tip of the iceberg of a slew of direct-to-VHS and direct-to-DVD movies that we've seen in the past 20 years ago, with a ton of cult auteurs pushing the boundary between scary and funny.

1980s Werewolf/Vampire Humor

Teen Wolf (1985), An American Werewolf In London (1981), Fright Night (1985), Mr. Vampire (1985), Once Bitten (1985), Vamp (1986) and Love At First Bite (1979) were just some of the cocaine-fueled laughs at Universal monsters. Here's a photo of Grace Jones at a vampire strip club, from Vamp.

Body Horror/Comedy

The Reanimator films and Brian Yuzna's Society, among others, take the David Cronenberg trope of the human body being transformed into something gooey, icky or disturbingly awful, and they find the silliness and subversive humor that lurks just behind that, with gore, decapitated limbs still moving and lots of oozing goop all providing opportunities for slapstick and discomfort. The 1980s were also the heydey of Frank Hennenlotter's over-the-top violence and bodily destruction, in films like Basket Case. I'd also stick Peter Jackson's Dead/Alive into this category. In many ways, this genre has been the gift that keeps on giving, as evidenced by the awesomeness of 2006's Slither.

The Rise Of Sam Raimi

Classic Sam Raimi films deserve their own category, especially the Evil Dead films and Army Of Darkness. Bruce Campbell in his prime, rocking the chainsaw hand, against the legions of dead. Good times.

Christopher Moore

No discussion of horror-comedy would be complete without mentioning the 1990s and 2000s novels of Christopher Moore, especially his vampire classics Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story, You Suck: A Love Story, and Bite Me: A Love Story, plus his zombie Christmas tale The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale Of Christmas Horror.

Creature Features

Tremors (1990), Arachnophobia (1990), Lake Placid (1999) and Eight-Legged Freaks (2002) were just some of the slew of tongue-in-cheek monster-rampage films that came out in the 1990s and early 2000s. My fave is probably Lake Placid, just for the amazingly deadpan performances by Bill Paxton and Betty White, among others.

Buffy Etc.

Joss Whedon's Buffy empire, including a movie and two television series, pretty much deserves its own category, and it came along with a slew of other TV shows and books featuring (frequently female) heroines facing tongue-in-cheek magical/horrific threats, including Charmed and Xena: Warrior Princess.

The Chucky and Leprechaun Films

I have no idea where those fit in, so I'm putting them here. These are like the silly counterparts to the already quite silly Jason Voorhees and Freddie Krueger films. Chucky is a weird doll that comes to life and attacks people (I guess — I've only read a comic-book adaptation) and there have been a million films about a silly leprechaun going around disemboweling people and controlling their minds. And rapping. And dancing.

Horror Spoofs

The Scream films in the late 1990s jumpstarted the slasher-movie genre with their knowing humor and sly horror-movie references. And then with the release of Scary Movie in 2000, the floodgates opened. There have been a ton of horror spoofs, many of them with the word "Movie" at the end of their titles. Plus the upcoming Transylmania, which exactly one person is excited about. (And we know where you live.)

Zombie Rom-Coms

Shaun Of The Dead, Planet Terror, Jennifer's Body and Zombieland all, to some extent, use the reanimated dead as a backdrop for character-focused comedies. (Okay, so the rom-com thing in the subhed is stretching it slightly — they don't all feature love stories, exactly. But some of them do.) Zombie comedies that are less character-focused include the Nazi epic Dead Snow, the zombie slave masterpiece Fido, the zombie sheep masterpiece Black Sheep and the incredibly nasty Zombie Strippers. Plus Bruce La Bruce's Otto, Or Up With The Dead People. Oh, and there's also last year's Poultrygeist: Night Of The Chicken Dead. No, really. There's also Jon Heder's webseries Woke Up Dead.

Meanwhile, in the world of books, many people see Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide as humorous, rather than as the indispensible handbook it is. There have also been a decent number of funny zombie books, including Breathers: A Zombie Lament by S.G. Browne, the mash-up Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, and several others.

Not entirely sure how it fits in, but horror spoof John Dies At The End, by Cracked.com editor Jason Pargin (under a pseudonym) is selling like hotcakes on Amazon.

Sources include Wikipedia, BoxOfficeMojo, IMDB, Scared Silly and the book Laughing Screaming: Modern Hollywood Horror & Comedy by William Paul.

Additional reporting by Mary Ratliff.

Hulu:
Hulu's Hulloween special section has load of movies to tantalize your horror needs including, 28 Days Later, Night Of The Living Dead, Christine, Near Dark (my favorite horror flick of all times), The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror and lots more. Unfortunately many people can't view Hulu, so we're offering up other options. But while it's there please enjoy John Carpenter's The Thing:

The Thing:

Ez Takes:
EZ Takes has a fantastic collection of the really good old horror/scifi films. You can download a high res copy for a price or just stream the whole thing from the site. It's got all the classic like The Ape Man, White Zombie,and Human Monster (with Bella Lugosi)

The Sci Fi Drive In:
The Sci Fi Channel offers up a fair selection of classic horror black and whites such as The Killer Shrews, Menace From Outer Space, The Mad Monsters, The Attack Of Giant Leeches and other large attacking thingies to fear.
 
 
 

Teen Angst And Treats on The WB:
Yay it's the "Halloween Special" episodes of Buffy, One Tree Hill and Friends. Sure not scifi but still everyone looks forward to the Halloween special ten times more than the Thanksgiving clip show.

ABC Family:
In true Family style ABC Family is hosting the entire first season of The Adams Family. Plus The Joan Collins in Empire Of The Ants where Ms. Collins plays a scam artist real estate agent in Florida selling people crap land that they all later find out is home to giant ants!

Fearnet:
Besides their adorable 66.6 second film recaps of all the horror classics (from Jason to Candyman) they're also hosting The Midnight Meat Train in its entirety.

Here's Night of The Living Dead in 66.6 Seconds:

Thriller:
And of course would it be Halloween with out a little Thriller? We couldn't embed the whole thing but you can check out the entire Michael Jackson Zombie dance over at yyoutube.e. And until we can find it as a whole to embed, please enjoy Indian Thriller:

Indian Thriller:

Google Video:
Google Video is stocked with so many horror classics which we decided to just give you the best straight up.

Phantasm [Some NSFW]:

Plan 9 From Outer Space:
 
 
 
 
 
And Just For Fun Here's A Little MST3K And Some Rocky Horror:

MST3K Pod People:

Hobgoblins (Because It's My Top 5 MST3K)
 
 
Rocky Horror Picture Show:

Free TV : Ustream

"I've even heard that they're going to put new songs in," O'Brien told the press. "I wrote the book, the music and the lyrics. Where are they going to get the songs from? Who's going to do that? That's a bit strange isn't it?" Yes, yes it is. Executive producer Lou Adler better get over and make nice with the Rocky Horror man himself or he's going to have a lot of picketing fans in their skivvies outside MTV.

Second, I'd like to meet the musician who thinks they can write better music that "Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me," and "Time Warp," to name just a few of the classics in Rocky.

The remake is set to be direct-to-TV.

[BBC News]

The movie remakes and respawns itself week after week as new generations of teenagers discover it at local rep houses and learn that freaks are everywhere (and they can be freaks too). How can you remake something that has already been remade thousands of times over by its audiences? And by theater troupes who reenact it? Plus, there's simply no way that the 1970s sexytime tale of a "sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania" could ever be told or retold in an era of safe sex and gay marriage. These days, Frank N Furter would just get married to Rocky, settle down, and move to the suburbs. The characters we love in Rocky Horror, and that audiences talk back to in cities across the world, cannot be "updated." And they cannot ever be remade in a way more pleasing than we can remake them ourselves, in our local theaters, wearing silly makeup and carrying umbrellas.

MTV Readies Rocky Horror Redux [Variety]

Famous names: Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Meatloaf, Ultra Violet

Crunchy goodness: 5

Sight you'll never unsee: Tim Curry as the hottest alien scientist transvestite ever captured on film, strutting around in an sparkly cape right out of Flash Gordon serials, singing: "I'm not much of a man by the light of day, but by night I'm one hell of a lover . . . I'm just a sweet transvestite from Transsexual Transylvania."

Memorable product tie-in: Rocky Horror Picture Show became the first "midnite movie" that includes ritualized audience participation: people shout out lines, dress up to reenact the movie while it plays, dance the Time Warp in the aisles, and squirt water during the rainstorm scene (also, much to the annoyance of generations of movie theater employees, they throw rice during a wedding scene, and toast when Frankenfurter proposes a toast). Midnite shows of Rocky Horror, which have been a staple at indie theaters for over three decades, are probably the movie's most lucrative tie-in, along with sales of rice and water guns in the vicinity of said theaters.

Stunt casting: An in-his-prime Meatloaf chews scenery (and belts out a rock tune) as Frankenfurter's first lab creation, Eddie, whom the scientist put into deep freeze for being disobedient.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show Official Fan Site